|
|
 |
| |
Antony Sher’s intriguing ‘what if?’ tale of two artists
IN terms of artistic primacy, it is a clash of the titans. Leonardo da Vinci and Michaelangelo, two Renaissance heavyweights, fighting over the commission to carve a vast block of precious Carrara marble known as Il Gigante; and fighting also for the affections of a young quarryman, the muse to both of them, later immortalised as the sculpture ‘David’. Could history be so exciting?
Probably not, admits Sir Antony Sher, celebrated actor and writer of the new play The Giant which opens at the Hampstead Theatre in Swiss Cottage this week, but one should never let a little thing like truth get in the way of a good story.
“I don’t feel like I have any responsibility to be historically accurate,” he says with a defiant tone. “I don’t like biopics. It’s a dull form. If you want historical accuracy go and read a history book.”
“In reality, Leonardo and Michaelangelo only met each other once briefly in the street. But this play is a drama and drama has to deliver something else. I’m taking my own line on it, using history as a springboard for drama.”
Sir Antony’s dramatic principles find him in good company. Rewriting history for theatre’s sake is a time-honoured tradition, as old as the pillars of the Acropolis. He himself is perhaps best known for his portrayal of other writers’ liberal interpretations of historical characters, Shakespeare’s Richard III in particular.
But it was a claim made in Vassari’s Lives of the Artists that Leonardo might have been the original artist chosen to carve David which inspired Sher to pen his own version of events.
For the South African actor, the crux of his play was the link between creativity and sexuality. “Both men were gay, we’re pretty sure of that now, but it is believed both led celibate lives,” he explains.
“Michaelangelo’s work was overflowing with naked muscular men, but he was a very religious man. He was unable in life to practice his sexuality and he pulled it into his work. Leonardo was arrested for sodomy as a young man and I believe it gave him such a fright that he was celibate from then on. So both poured all that energy into their work. Florence was an incredibly liberal place at this time, and yet these men were still repressed for different reasons.”
Roger Allam and John Light will lend their significant theatrical weight to the roles of Leonardo and Michaelangelo, but the surprise casting is Stephen Hagan as the narrator and quarryman muse, Vito. Straight out of LAMDA, Hagan will be expected to act alongside the country’s best, often in the nude, while appearing at all times a
classical Adonis.
As for Sir Antony, who had starring roles in his first two plays ID and Primo, there is not a part for him in sight this time. “It’s very exciting for me,” he smiles. “I deliberately made sure there was no part in this that I could play. In both my other plays I felt robbed of the experience of being the writer bringing the stuff to life because I had to act as well. I’m absolutely enthralled by that experience now.”
 |
|
|
|
|
|
